Fireworks Gone -- What Now?

[MatthewSchenker]

Hey Everyone,

Very displeased to see the post on .Net magazine's site today about the end of Fireworks (http://www.netmagazine.com/news/fireworks-axed-adobe-pro-software-goes-cloud-only-132733#comment-11468)!

I have been using Fireworks for years for site layouts/mockups/presentation to clients, and much more.

Just wondering -- who here also uses Fireworks, and what will you do now?  For those of you who do not use Fireworks, what is your preferred equivalent application?  Seems like it's time for me to consider alternatives.

Thanks,

Matthew

[thetuningspoon]

This is VERY disappointing, although I saw it coming. I use Fireworks and will continue to use the current version until it becomes unusable or something better comes along. As far as I can see, Fireworks is still the best app out there for my web design workflow.

[MatthewSchenker]

Greetings,

In some sense, this could be one of those situations where a bad situation becomes a good situation.  When I look at my workflow, the only Adobe product I use extensively is Fireworks, and therefore I am facing the prospect of maintaining a $600/year Creative Cloud subscription mostly for that application.  I have already replaced Photoshop and Illustrator with other applications, and even though I like what I see with Adobe Edge I can't say it's become part of my workflow yet.  Finding a proper replacement for Fireworks may be better in the end.

Doing a quick round-up, here are a couple of applications I am seeing as possible replacements:

Sketch

Antetype

There is also an application possibility with the person who was one of the leads in Fireworks:

Tribaloid

Finally, there is this petition to make Fireworks open-source (not sure how successful it will be, but I signed):

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/adobe-com-release-adobe-fireworks-to-open-source

Thanks,

Matthew

[diogo]

Tribaloid

 

eheh, a close friend of mine designed the font on that website

[thetuningspoon]

Thanks for the recommendations, I will be trying each of them out. That Tribaloid site is pretty sweet-- I'll definitely keep my eye on that.

I don't have a Creative Cloud subscription. I just use Fireworks CS5. So I don't have to worry about losing it, but it's good to see what else is out there.

Fireworks is also the only Adobe product I use. For complex vectors, logos, icons, and print I use (and prefer) Inkscape, and for photo editing I use GIMP. But Fireworks has always been what I use to bring it all together for the web.

eheh, a close friend of mine designed the font on that website 

It's an awesome font!

[diogo]

It's inspired on the old shop letters in Porto http://www.mdemaria.com/2009/08/17/bazar/

[thetuningspoon]

Looking at the website for Sketch, the feature set looks fantastic--Fireworks taken to the next level. Will definitely take a look at this one.

EDIT: Based on 20min of playing around with Sketch, I think I'm already sold. Very simple but very feature-rich interface with all the important stuff out front, good integration with CSS, multiple page capability, and the vector capabilities are much better than Fireworks. It seems to do for design what MacRabbit Espresso does for web coding.

Antetype looks nice, but not as intuitive as Sketch and much more aimed at prototyping interfaces rather than styling them. Seems like it would be harder to achieve those "happy accident" kind of moments that you can get working in Fireworks or Photoshop. It's more like working in the browser, which for me is very restrictive and inefficient.

[MatthewSchenker]

Hey Everyone,

I've spent some time playing with Sketch and Antetype today.  Of those two, Sketch is more along the lines of what I am trying to do.

Another one I have been looking at is WebCode.

Would be happy to hear about others!

Thanks,

Matthew

EDIT: Gotta say, after spending some time with all of these "alternatives," some of them have parts that are better, but none of them comes close overall to Fireworks.  I really hope the code can somehow be taken up by someone else, or that Tirbaloid comes through somehow.

[Marty Walker]

I'm a long time Adobe CS user and PS used to be what I designed in - FW has never gelled with me at all. Then I used Keynote for a while which was quite good for doing simple stuff. I'm currently using Sketch which I think has great potential to cover all the design bases for me. There are some niggles and some features that are needed: master pages, paste-in-place, being able to alter grid visibility, better type styling. I could go on!

[pideluxe]

Maybe Xara Designer could be a replacement for Fireworks. I use it for most of my design works, because it's much handier and more responsive than Illustrator. The main advantage is the combination of bitmap and vectors in a single app, you can also apply live effects on vectors such as drop shadow, transparency and photoshop-plugins without making them permanent, much like in Fireworks.

I know it's not free or open source, but i think it is a reasonable price for such a software.

[onjegolders]

I still use FW CS5 and am very happy with it. I couldn't imagine changing to Photoshop. I've looked at Sketch before but never really found it "serious" enough but will have another look as I've heard rave reviews.

Thanks for the link Matthew.